What is the age of a moth,
fluttering in darkness
and counting days in eddies
of light?
A spoonful makes the measure
of life.

The mosquito counts years
in hours,
egg-obsessed,
seizing the day.
The sloth, though,
is born old,
time trickles through its fancies
like water through rock,
feeding secret caverns
of thought.

Trees’ slow-grown rings
beat time like an ancient clock,
sounding the rhythm of years,
the girth of their growth
gathering the substance of summer.

My growth
is harder to measure,
an invisible garnering of wisdom
and spirit
that can light time,
allowing the turn of the earth
to furnish a rhythm
of fading leaves, stiffening boughs

and fruit.